Internet was an outgrowth of the ARPANET as had been designed as a research project by BBN Inc after it was awarded a grant from the U.S. Government Defense Department in the sixties and seventies. No one, however, could have imagined the explosive growth of the Internet experienced in the last decade, primarily as a consequence of the technology created by the grant, and now called the Internet Protocol (IP for short). With the explosive growth of this technology, processing speed and addressing bottlenecks have been created, leading to proposals that may force the industry to adopt completely new technologies involving drastic changes in infrastructure that would create a huge economic impact. Foreseeing such economic impact, it has become difficult for the industry to adapt to, or come to consensus on, the next new standard technology.
Currently, there are two major directional changes; one that addresses the processing speed of network datagrams, called IP packets, and the other that addresses the `addressing limits` of the IP packets. These two directions have been pushed by the industry for some time but have not been agreed upon by any engineering committee. Finalization of these standards involves serious consideration of substantial new investments in technology and in the justification of obsoleting billions of dollars worth of previous investment.
With the breakthrough of the present invention, however, the current IP structure itself may be retained, adapted and used to solve not only both the processing and addressing speed problems, but also to solve ancillary problems, in many environments, as well, and without changing the current infrastructure, and with continued use of current technology.